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Boston College Men's Basketball Program Announces Four Additions to Staff

Former UConn assistant coach Luke Murray was hired as BC men's basketball's new head coach on March 26.
Graham Dietz|
Boston College men's basketball (@BCMBB) via X.

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The Boston College men’s basketball program announced the hiring of four new members to first-year head coach Luke Murray’s staff on Monday afternoon.

The group consists of Tim O’Toole as the Eagles’ new chief of staff, while Kyle Griffin, Mathew Johnson, and Brenden Straughn will serve as assistant coaches to Murray.

Hailing from White Plains, N.Y., O’Toole comes to the Heights after spending the last nine years at Pittsburgh as its associate head coach. During his tenure, O’Toole helped guide the Panthers to three straight winning seasons from 2022-25, including an NCAA Tournament bid in 2023.

O’Toole got his start in coaching as an assistant at Iona (1990-91) and Army (1989-90) after serving as a graduate assistant at Fordham from 1987-89.

Following those two stints, he served on Syracuse's staff from 1991-95 as an assistant coach. The Orange appeared in three NCAA Tournaments during that span and captured the 1992 Big East Championship.

He then spent two years as an assistant coach to the legendary Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, helping lead the Blue Devils to the 1997 ACC title while working alongside Quin Snyder of the Atlanta Hawks and Tommy Amaker, who is now at Harvard.

Prior to taking his first-ever head coaching job at Fairfield, his alma mater, he joined Amaker’s staff at Seton Hall from 1997-98, in which the Pirates finished third place in the Big East and earned an NIT bid.

From 1998-2006 as the head coach at Fairfield, O’Toole helmed the Stags to three consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 1978, including an NIT berth in 2003. He was honored as the 2003-04 MAAC Coach of the Year and brought in the top recruiting classes in school history.

After six years with ESPN, SNY, and IMG as an analyst and color commentator, O’Toole was roped back into coaching by serving a second term for Syracuse for the 2012-13 season, in which the Orange made the Final Four.

He went to Stanford for three years after that, which saw the Cardinal advance to the Sweet 16 in 2014 and the NIT Championship in 2015, and Cal for the next two seasons before ultimately arriving at Pitt.

Griffin makes his way to Chestnut Hill, Mass., after the culmination of his fourth season at Florida Gulf Coast, where he served as the associate head coach from 2023-24. Prior to coaching the Eagles, he spent four years at La Salle, two as the associate head coach.

He was also a member of the coaching staff at Lehigh (2013-16) and Robert Morris (2016-18).

Johnson comes to BC from Princeton, where he was the Tigers’ assistant coach after six years at UConn — Murray’s prior team.

In college, he was a four-year letterman and a two-year captain at the University of Tampa. He finished his career ranked fourth all-time in program history in assists and was a member of the Spartans’ 2014 NCAA-Tournament squad.

Straughn has been an assistant coach at Syracuse for the past three seasons.

He first earned a collegiate coaching job as an assistant at Loyola Maryland from 2018-19, and he moved to Saint Joseph’s for a three-year stint (2019-22) before making a stop at George Washington for the 2022-23 season.

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Graham Dietz
GRAHAM DIETZ

Graham Dietz is a 2025 graduate of Boston College and subsequently joined Boston College On SI. He previously served as an editor for The Heights, the independent student newspaper, from fall 2021, including as Sports Editor from 2022-23. Graham works for The Boston Globe as a sports correspondent, covering high school football, girls' basketball, and baseball. He was also a beat writer for the Chatham Anglers of the Cape Cod Baseball League in the summer of 2023.

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